Ana Seymour - Maid Of Midnight

She was still smiling when she reached the sickroom. She couldn’t remember ever seeing quite the same look of consternation on Brother Francis’s kind face. It was wicked of her to enjoy it, but she’d had so little chance to do anything out of the ordinary, much less shocking, in her life here. This was an adventure, even if it only meant cleaning up a stranger who, from the look of him, was destined for the tiny graveyard behind the chapel.

The room’s candle had burned out in a puddle of tallow, but the late afternoon sun slanted through the tiny window, providing plenty of light. After a moment of hesitation, Bridget set her shoulders and walked over to the cot. She put the kettle on the floor and sank to her knees beside it, bringing her face only inches away from the sleeping man.

This close, she could see the stubble of whiskers along his square jaw. She had a sudden urge to know what they felt like, and, realizing that there was nothing to prevent her from doing so, she reached out a gentle finger and stroked his chin. The harsh prickle surprised her. She pulled back as though burned, then touched him once again, more slowly.

His sunken eyes were rimmed with thick black lashes. Tendrils of hair escaping from his head dressing were black as well. What color were his eyes? she wondered.

Giving herself a little shake, she took one of the rags she’d brought along, soaked it in the hot water and began to wash him. The dried blood was two days old, and she had to rub to remove it. Her patient moaned and shifted restlessly on the cot, but did not awaken.

She removed his bandage to reveal an open, oozing gash along the side of his head. After supper she’d return with one of her herb poultices, but for the moment, she wrapped him back up in a new dressing. She finished washing his face, then his neck. Clean of the dirt and blood, his countenance was undeniably handsome, in spite of the pallor.

She reached the collar of his tunic and stopped, uncertain. It should come off, she decided. Now that his face was clean, the blood-soaked garment looked horrific. She threw the rag into the water and rose to her feet. The most sensible thing to do would be to leave the disrobing to the brothers. She had no doubt she was strong enough for the task—her days of hard work had made her stronger than many of the monks. But she had some doubt about the propriety of such an action.

She stood watching the patient for a long time, hesitating. He’d settled back into his deathlike stupor. In truth, she told herself, ’twas no different than cleaning up the bloody calf one of the milk cows had birthed last week. Taking a deep breath, she pulled the blanket from the inert man and threw it to the floor. Beneath the waist-length tunic, he wore woolen hose. Bridget gave a little gasp. She’d seen paintings in her books, but the only men she’d seen in person had been the monks, clad in their billowy robes. This man’s legs bulged with sinewy strength. Between his legs were bulges of another sort.

At the pit of her stomach was a curious stirring.

She should definitely call the monks, she thought, even as she began to lift the man and strip the bloody tunic from his back. His naked chest was as hard and powerful as his thighs. Bridget swallowed, her mouth gone suddenly dry.

Without taking her eyes from the man’s body, she leaned over to rinse the bloody rag in the cooling water. She was staring, she knew, but who was there to see? Then, with an impish grin at her own boldness, she proceeded to give the mysterious stranger a thorough washing from chest to…toe.

Ranulf couldn’t understand why it was taking so long to cross the Channel. And why had they stuffed him into a barrel for the crossing so that he couldn’t look out at the sea and sky? He tried to lift a fist to pound on the lid and demand release, but, to his amazement, his arm wouldn’t move. Nothing would, for that matter.

Nothing was moving except the barrel, which made its regular up-and-down swoop with every new wave. Ranulf wanted to be sick, but even his stomach wouldn’t move. Nor his mouth. His eyes wouldn’t open, either. What had happened to him? he wondered in sudden panic.

The barrel surged again with the wave—up, up, then holding for an endless moment, then down. The movement sent a shaft of pain stabbing through his head. Jesu. What was wrong?

As the pain splintered light into his brain, the top of the barrel lifted and a beautiful, golden-haired woman peered in at him, smiling. He tried to call to her, but his throat closed around the words.

Darkness swirled, then she was there again—the golden angel. He made another desperate attempt to speak, but all he could produce was a moan of pain. His groan echoed off the sides of the barrel. As the sound grew louder and louder, the angel slammed the lid of the barrel shut on top of him, and everything went black.

Brother Alois, acting abbot of St. Gabriel, seemed to assume that it had been Brother Francis who had bathed the wounded man and dressed him in one of the monks’ own habits. Neither Bridget nor Francis bothered to correct him. But after her intimate session with the stranger the previous evening, Bridget had decided to let the monks take over the nursing. She’d spent one of her restless nights with visions of outside the walls. She dreamed that she’d accompanied the monks to market all the way to Rouen, walking freely beside them along the road, and that everyone they passed on the way looked like the handsome stranger lying in the monks’ quarters.

She woke up resolving to stay away from the visitor, and kept her resolve throughout the day until evening when Francis came to request her help. “You mentioned one of your poultices, child, and I think it might help, for the poor lad has surely got the blood poisons.”

She’d finished cleaning up from dinner and the monk had caught her leaving the kitchen, ready to retire to her little home next door to it. Long ago, the small brick building had been a brewery, and the faint, yeasty smell of ale still clung stubbornly to the masonry walls. But Bridget had lived there these past ten years or more, ever since the monks decided that she needed a place of her own with a sturdy door and proper latch.

It was not that they thought any member of their order capable of the unimaginable sin that those precautions suggested. But, Brother Alois had cautioned gravely, none of them had thought Bridget’s father capable of such a transgression, either.

Bridget looked remorseful. “I’d meant to put a poultice on last night, but then I…I was distracted, I fear.”

“Will you do it yet tonight or wait until the morrow?”

“It’d best be soon. I’ll just prepare the paste and go on over to him.”

Brother Francis looked up at the darkening sky. “I’ll wait and go back with you.”

“Nay, brother. You’ve been up tending him since well before dawn. Go on to your bed. It won’t take me but a few minutes to see to him, then I’ll be safely back to my house.”

After a moment’s more convincing, Francis turned to leave, and Bridget went back into the kitchen to prepare one of her medicinal poultices of marjoram and feverfew.

Bridget had begun to study the healing arts years ago after the death of one of her favorite monks from a relatively minor injury. She’d spent nearly a month closeted in the monastery library, and then had persuaded Brothers Ebert and Alois to purchase herbs on one of their market forays. Since then, she raised the plants in her own garden, and the health of the monks of St. Gabriel had flourished accordingly.

It was dark by the time she made her way over to the monks’ quarters. As she approached the building, she felt an odd excitement at seeing the stranger again. She slipped through the tiny back door that admitted her directly into the hall next to the wounded man’s chamber.